Light Brings Salt
Volume 2, Issue 32
Dedicated to the
Systematic Exposition of the Word of God
Why We Should Believe in a
Global Flood
by Dr. Henry M. Morris [Founder ICR]
The Biblical Flood in the days of Noah has become a great
divide between two watersheds of belief. On the one hand there are those who
say it is either a purely mythological event or else possibly a local or
regional flood. This group includes practically all evolutionists, but it also
includes the “old-earth creationists.”
These all accept the
so-called geological ages as the approved record of Earth history, recognizing
that a global hydraulic cataclysm would have destroyed any evidence for such
geological ages. The geological ages concept and a
worldwide devastating Flood logically cannot coexist.
On the other hand,
“young-earth creationists” accept the Biblical record of the Flood as a literal
record of a tremendous cataclysm involving not only a worldwide Flood, but
also great tectonic upheavals and volcanic outpourings that completely
changed the crust of the earth and its topography in the days of Noah.
Those of us who hold this
view are commonly ridiculed as unscientific and worse, so it would be more
comfortable and financially rewarding if we would just go along with the
evolutionary establishment, downgrade the Flood, and accept the geological
ages.
But this we cannot do for
a number of, what seem to us, compelling reasons. In fact, I have made a list
of 100 reasons for believing in a global Flood. For those who are interested,
the list is included in two of my books, The
Genesis Record and The Defender‘s
Study Bible.
Biblical
Reasons
A few of the many Biblical reasons for believing in the
global Flood are briefly summarized below. For those who believe in the Bible
as the inerrant word of God, these should be sufficient.
1. Jesus Christ believed
the Old Testament record of the worldwide Flood. Speaking of the antediluvian
population, He said: “The flood came, and took them all away (Matthew 24:39).
Evolutionary anthropologists are all convinced that people had spread over the
entire Earth by the time assigned to Noah in Biblical chronology, so an anthropologically
universal Flood would clearly have required a geographically worldwide Flood.
2. The apostle Peter
believed in a worldwide hydraulic cataclysm. “Whereby the world [Greek, kosmos] that then was, being overflowed
[Greek, katakiuzo] with water, perished” (2 Peter 3:6).
The “world” was defined in the previous verse as “the heavens ... and the
earth.” Peter also said that “God ... spared not the old world, but saved Noah
. . . bringing in the flood [Greek, katakiusmaj] upon the world of the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:5). Note also that these words katakiuzo and katakiusmos (from which we derive our English word “cataclysm”) are applied
exclusively in the New Testament to the great Flood of Noah’s day.
3.
The Old Testament record of the flood, which both Christ and Peter accepted as
real history, clearly teaches a global Flood. Therefore, it seems to us that Christians, professing to believe in
Christ and follow Him, can do no less. For example, the record emphasizes
that “all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven . . . and the mountains
were covered” (Genesis
4. Since “all flesh died
that moved upon the earth ... all that was in the dry land” (Genesis 7:21,22), Noah and his
sons had to build a huge Ark to preserve animal life for the post-diluvian world—an Ark
that can easily be shown to have had more than ample capacity to carry
at least two of every known species of
land animal (marine animals were not involved, of course). Such an ark was
absurdly unnecessary for anything but a global Flood.
5. God promised that
never “shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth” (Genesis
Scientific
Reasons
The earth’s surface and sedimentary crust also bear strong
witness to the historicity of a worldwide Flood, and the early geologists
(Steno, Woodward, etc.) taught this. Most modern geologists have argued, on
the other hand, that the earth’s crust was formed slowly over billions of
years. Yes, but consider the following significant facts.
1. All the mountains of the world have been
under water at some time or times in the past, as indicated by sedimentary
rocks and marine fossils near their summits. Even most volcanic mountains with
their pillow lavas seem largely to have been formed when under water.
2. Most of the earth’s crust consists of
sedimentary rocks (sandstone, shale, limestone, etc.). These were originally
formed in almost all cases under water, usually by deposition after
transportation by water from various sources.
3. The assigned “ages" of the sedimentary
beds (which comprise the bulk of the “geologic column”) have been deduced from
their assemblages of fossils. Fossils, however, normally require very rapid
burial and compaction to be preserved at all. Thus every sedimentary
formation appears to have been formed rapidly—even catastrophically—and more
and more present day geologists are returning to this point of view.
4. Since there is known to be a global
continuity of sedimentary formations in the geologic column (that is, there is
no worldwide “unconformity,” or time
gap, between successive “ages”), and since each unit was formed rapidly, the
entire geologic column seems to be the product of continuous rapid deposition
of sediments, comprising in effect the geological record of a time when “the
world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.”
5. It is also significant that the types of
rocks, the vast extent of specific sedimentary rock formations, the minerals and
metals, coal and oil found in rocks, the various types of structures (i.e.,
faults, folds, thrusts, etc.), sedimentary rocks grossly deformed while still
soft from recent deposition, and numerous other features seem to occur
indiscriminately throughout the various “ages” supposedly represented in the
column. To all outward appearances, therefore, they were all formed in
essentially the same brief time period.
6. The fossil sequences in the sedimentary
rocks do not constitute a legitimate exception to this rule, for there is a
flagrant circular reasoning process involved in using them to identify their
supposed geologic age. That is, the fossils have been dated by the rocks where
they are found, which in turn had been dated by their imbedded fossils with the
sequences based on their relative assumed stages of evolution, which had
ultimately been based on the ancient philosophy of the “great chain of being.”
Instead of representing the evolution of life over many ages, the fossils
really speak of the destruction of life (remember that fossils are dead
things, catastrophically buried for preservation) in one age, with their
actual local “sequences” having been determined by the ecological communities
in which they were living at the time of burial.
7. The fact that there
are traditions of the great Flood found in hundreds of tribes in all parts of
the world (all similar in one way or another to that in the Genesis record) is
firm evidence that those tribes all originated from the one family preserved
through the cataclysm. This brief article is a mere introduction to the large
array of scientific and Biblical evidences that could be cited for the great
Flood of the Bible, global in extent and cataclysmic in character and results.
The book, The Genesis Flood (coauthored
by Dr. John Whitcomb and myself back in 1961), supplemented by many subsequent
books and especially by many writers and articles in the Creation Research Society Quarterly scattered over its 35 years of
publication, as well as various other creationist journals, provides an
abundance of further evidence and documentation of the global extent and
cataclysmic nature of the Flood.
One can understand why
atheistic and pantheistic evolutionists have to interpret Earth history in
terms of great ages and evolution, rather than Creation and the Flood. They
really have no other choice, once they have decided to reject the God of
Creation and His record in the Bible. However, it is very difficult to
understand why men and women who do believe in God and His word do this. The
Bible is explicitly clear on the global Deluge, and sound scientific evidence
supports it.
But this position does
mean that the geological ages could never have happened, and too many establishment oriented Christians are not yet willing to
take such a stand. And that’s rather sad in these last critical days.
Note: If you have
internet access the Institute for Creation Research web site has a great deal
of great info on the subject. www.icr.org